WASHINGTON — The White House said Tuesday that President Donald Trump made more than $150 million in income in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes that year.

The acknowledgement came shortly before MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported on two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax forms on her Tuesday night show.

The records were obtained by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who said he received the documented unsolicited, in the mail.

The revelation provides the most recent glimpse at Trump’s income. Last fall, the New York Times reported that Trump reported a massive $916 million loss in 1995, which enabled him to avoid paying income taxes for decades.

The records have become highly sought-after because Trump refused to release his returns during the campaign, breaking a decades-long tradition. He claimed he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and said his attorneys had advised against it – though experts and IRS officials said such audits don’t bar taxpayers from releasing their returns.

The White House pushed back pre-emptively Tuesday night, saying that publishing those returns would be illegal.

“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the statement said. It added that Trump, as “one of the most successful businessmen in the world,” paid “no more tax than legally required.”

The statement went on to say: “Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that. Despite this substantial income figure and tax paid, it is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns. The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans.”

The unauthorized release or publishing of federal tax returns is a criminal offence, punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and up to five years in jail. But Maddow argued that MSNBC was exercising its First Amendment right to publish information in the public interest.

Based on the documents obtained by Johnston, Trump paid $36.5 million in taxes on $153 million in income, for an effective tax rate of around 24 per cent. That percentage is higher than the roughly 10 per cent the average American pays each year — but below the 27.4 per cent that taxpayers earning 1 million dollars a year average, according to data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Trump long insisted the American public wasn’t interested in his returns and said little could be learned from them. But Trump’s full returns would contain key details about things like his charitable giving and how much he made each year.

The issue a major point of attack from his rival Hillary Clinton, who suggested Trump had something to hide.

The White House has not said whether or not the president plans to release his returns while he’s in office. More than 1 million people have signed a White House petition urging the president to release them.

Trump wrote off $100-million in business losses in 2005, tax forms show
PETER BAKER and SUSANNE CRAIG
The New York Times News Service
Published Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2017 8:46PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2017 11:32PM EDT

President Donald Trump wrote off $100 million in business losses to reduce his federal taxes in 2005, according to forms made public Tuesday night in a rare glimpse at documents that he has refused to disclose since becoming a candidate for the nation’s highest office.

The forms showed that Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes on reported income of $150 million, an effective tax rate of 25 percent, according to Rachel Maddow, who aired them on her MSNBC show. By claiming losses from previous years, Trump was able to save tens of millions of dollars in taxes that he otherwise might have owed.

The White House responded without even waiting for the show to air, issuing a statement that seemed to confirm the authenticity of the forms even as it defended Trump and assailed the network for publicizing them.

“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the statement said.

The White House added: “Before being elected president, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world, with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required.” In addition to the federal income taxes, the statement said, he paid “tens of millions of dollars in other taxes, such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes, and this illegally published return proves just that.”

The tax forms were sent to David Cay Johnston, a former New York Times reporter who covered the Internal Revenue Service for years and has written a book on Trump. Appearing with Maddow, he said he had received the forms “over the transom” and did not know who had sent them. He suggested that they might even have been sent by Trump himself.

Trump’s refusal to make his tax returns public broke with decades of tradition in presidential contests and emerged as a central issue in the campaign. That drumbeat has continued since he entered the White House, particularly from people who feel his returns may shed light on various aspects of his business practices, including whether he has done business with Russian firms and banks.

Trump initially promised he would release the returns: “I have very big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful, and we’ll be working that over in the next period of time,” he said in a January 2016 television interview. He then backpedaled, saying he would wait until the IRS had completed its audit. In May 2016, his lawyers released a letter saying that his personal tax returns had been “under continuous examination” by the IRS since 2002, and that the examinations for the returns from 2009 on were continuing.

The IRS has not confirmed that Trump’s taxes are in fact under audit.

Democrats immediately pounced on Tuesday night’s report, arguing that the White House’s decision to release details of Trump’s 2005 taxes before Maddow’s show undercut his past refusal to release any such information.

“If they can release some of the information, they can release all of the information,” Zac Petkanas, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “The only reason not to release his returns is to hide what’s in them, such as financial connections with Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin.”

In October, The New York Times published three pages of Trump’s 1995 returns, which showed a $916 million tax deduction that could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.

This deduction was derived from the financial wreckage of some of the companies he drove into bankruptcy years ago, including his Atlantic City casinos, and would have allowed him to cancel out taxable income for an 18-year period. A tax code provision benefiting real estate developers, which took effect in 1993, permitted businesses like Trump’s to take tax deductions for losing other people’s money.

Few people outside of Trump’s inner circle have seen his tax returns. One person who has is Timothy L. O’Brien, another former reporter for The New York Times, who was sued for libel by Trump after he published a book that argued that Trump’s net worth was $150 million to $250 million, rather than several billion dollars, as Trump had claimed. The suit was ultimately dismissed.

Limited information about Trump’s tax returns from other years has surfaced in court and regulatory records. A 1981 report by New Jersey regulators assessing Trump’s fitness for a casino license stated that he had paid more than $71,000 in federal income taxes on about $218,000 of taxable income earned from 1975 to 1977.

But in the next two years, 1978 and 1979, Trump paid no federal income taxes. The report explained that by taking advantage of deductions available to real estate developers and claiming losses from partnerships, he was able to report a “negative income” of $406,379 in 1978 and $3.4 million in 1979 — thus avoiding any tax liability for those two years, a time when he claimed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tax court records indicate that Trump also avoided paying any federal income taxes in 1984. In 1991 and 1993, when Trump’s Atlantic City casinos were in deep financial trouble, casino commission reports show that he claimed losses that would have allowed him to avoid paying income taxes in those years, too. Trump may have been able to use those losses to reduce or eliminate his federal tax bill for years to come.

During the presidential debates, Hillary Clinton suggested that Trump was refusing to release his tax returns to hide the fact that he did not pay federal income taxes. “That makes me smart,” Trump retorted during one debate.

In response to The Times’ disclosure that Trump could have used a $916 million tax loss to avoid paying years of federal income taxes, Trump and his surrogates said the revelation merely proved Trump’s “genius” at legally avoiding that burden.